{"id":14825,"date":"2020-06-11T07:09:30","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T11:09:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=14825"},"modified":"2020-09-17T12:55:14","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T16:55:14","slug":"usa-today-presidents-perennially-ignored-federal-law-on-police-carnage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/11\/usa-today-presidents-perennially-ignored-federal-law-on-police-carnage\/","title":{"rendered":"USA TODAY: Presidents Perennially Ignored Federal Law on Police Carnage"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/USA-Today-logo-300x300.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-11907 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/USA-Today-logo-300x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/USA-Today-logo-300x300.png 225w, https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/USA-Today-logo-300x300-150x150.png 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a>USA TODAY, June 11, 2020<\/h3>\n<h1 class=\"gnt_ar_hl\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/opinion\/2020\/06\/11\/george-floyd-police-killings-violence-neglected-federally-column\/5320501002\/\">Under four presidents, the Feds neglected duty to collect statistics on police killings<\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 class=\"gnt_ar_shl\">Why has the Justice Department failed to follow a law from 1994?<\/h2>\n<div class=\"gnt_ar_by\">by James Bovard<\/div>\n<div class=\"gnt_ar_b\">\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has been condemned by former Presidents <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2020\/06\/obama-bush-carter-george-floyd-protests.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">Bill Clinton, George W. Bush\u00a0and Barack Obama<\/a>. However, police violence spiraled out of control in part because each of those presidents failed to obey a law compelling the feds to track police killings around the nation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">In 1994, Congress enacted the <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/103rd-congress\/house-bill\/3355\/text\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act<\/a>, which boosted subsidies for local and state law enforcement. The bill also required the attorney general to \u201cacquire data about the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers\u201d across the nation and to \u201cpublish an annual summary of the data acquired.\u201d Congress effectively ordered the Justice Department to document how often police kill unarmed private citizens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Two years later, <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/bjs.gov\/content\/pub\/pdf\/ndcopuof.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">a Justice Department report<\/a> raised the white flag: \u201cSystematically collecting information on use of force from the nation&#8217;s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies is difficult given &#8230; the sensitivity of the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-usatoday-native-article_link-opinion-2\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJqv4aHO-ekCFQTbswodzbMHRA\" data-integralas-id-50b79b98-1904-764b-d236-a8a5c2028fd4=\"\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_0__container__\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_0\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_0\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-google-container-id=\"2\" data-load-complete=\"true\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Instead of requiring local and state law enforcement agencies to comply with the new federal law, the Justice Department\u00a0expanded its &#8220;police-public contact survey&#8221; to ask &#8220;a series of questions about the use of both appropriate and inappropriate force during police-civilian encounters.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Yet as professor James Fyfe, one of the nation\u2019s foremost experts on police shootings, observed, \u201cSince dead people can\u2019t participate in such a survey, this work tells us nothing about <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/pointsofaction.com\/blog\/when-cops-kill-someone-should-count-right-now-no-one-is-counting\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">how often police kill<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-usatoday-native-article_link-opinion-3\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJuv4aHO-ekCFQTbswodzbMHRA\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_1__container__\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_1\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_1\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-google-container-id=\"3\" data-load-complete=\"true\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Seven years after the 1994 crime bill was enacted, the Justice Department issued a report that effectively presumed that anyone who was gunned down by police deserved to die. &#8220;<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bjs.gov\/content\/pub\/pdf\/ph98.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">Policing and Homicide<\/a>, 1976\u20131998: Justifiable Homicide by Police, Police Officers Murdered by Felons&#8221;<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>labeled everyone in the nation who perished as a result of a police shooting as \u201cfelons justifiably killed by police.\u201d There were hundreds, if not thousands, of people shot unjustifiably by the police in those decades, but their innocence vanished in a copy-editing flick.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Justice Department was so embarrassed by the report\u2019s \u201clack of distinction <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2001\/04\/29\/weekinreview\/ideas-trends-bookkeeping-when-the-police-shoot-who-s-counting.html?login=email&amp;auth=login-email\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">between justifiable police shootings and murders<\/a>, that it did not send out its usual promotional material announcing the report,\u201d according to The New York Times.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"gnt_ar_b_h2\">Collecting police shooting data<\/h2>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Police killings became a hot topic nationwide after a policeman in Ferguson, Missouri, killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August 2014. Attorney General Eric Holder responded to that uproar by declaring, <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/08\/eric-holder-ferguson-law-enforcement-110020\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">\u201cWe must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community.\u201d<\/a> But the feds continued ignoring most police killings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Wall Street Journal noted in late 2014: \u201cJustifiable police homicides from 35 of the 105 large agencies contacted by the Journal didn\u2019t appear in the FBI records at all. Some agencies said they didn\u2019t view justifiable homicides by law-enforcement officers as events that should be reported.\u00a0The Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, for example, said it\u00a0 didn\u2019t consider such cases to be an &#8216;actual offense,&#8217;\u00a0and thus <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/hundreds-of-police-killings-are-uncounted-in-federal-statistics-1417577504?ns=prod\/accounts-wsj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">doesn\u2019t report them to the FBI<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside id=\"gnt_atomsnc\" class=\"gnt_em gnt_em_anc\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"loadAnc\" aria-label=\"Newsletter signup form\"><\/aside>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The FBI records also omitted any details of killings by police in some of the nation\u2019s most populous states and excluded all data on killings by federal agents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Shortly before he left office in 2015, Holder belatedly endorsed collecting national police shooting data. But his replacement, Loretta Lynch, publicly opposed requiring police departments to report their killings. That October, Lynch declared: \u201cOne of the things we are focusing on at the Department of Justice is <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/oct\/02\/loretta-lynch-reports-killed-by-police\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">not trying to reach down from Washington<\/a> and dictate to every local department how they should handle the minutia of record keeping.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">But it wasn\u2019t \u201cminutia\u201d for the families of police victims.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The attorney general also said,\u00a0\u201cThe statistics are important, but the real issues are: What steps are we all taking to connect communities \u2026 with police and back with government?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Lynch ignored the fact that many police departments were reckless in part because the Justice Department always championed them at the Supreme Court. Obama\u2019s \u201cJustice Department has <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/04\/22\/us\/at-supreme-court-holders-justice-dept-routinely-backs-officers-use-of-force.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">supported police officers every time<\/a> an excessive-force case has made its way\u201d to a Supreme Court hearing, The Times noted.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">In response to the dearth of reliable federal data, The Washington Post and The Guardian began tracking individual shootings by local police across the nation. The Guardian relied on crowdsourcing on the internet to compile its report,<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/dec\/31\/the-counted-police-killings-2015-young-black-men\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\"> revealing that police killed 1,134 people across the nation in 2015<\/a>. This was 2 1\/2 times higher than the death toll the FBI reported\u00a0the previous year.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"gnt_ar_b_h2\">Failed regulations<\/h2>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Ferguson protests spurred Congress to enact another law in December 2014, the <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.congress.gov\/bill\/113th-congress\/house-bill\/1447\/text\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">Death in Custody Reporting Act<\/a>, compelling states and federal agencies to fully report fatalities of people they had sought to arrest or detain.\u00a0However, Obama\u2019s Justice Department delayed for two years before even proposing regulations to enforce the new law and the eventual regulations provided no penalty for state and local law enforcement agencies that failed to report shootings.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"gnt_m gnt_x gnt_x__lbl gnt_x__al\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<div id=\"ad-slot-7103-usatoday-native-article_link-opinion-4\" class=\"gnt_x_sl gnt_x_al\" data-g-r=\"lazy\" data-gl-method=\"lazyLoadX\" data-google-query-id=\"CJyv4aHO-ekCFQTbswodzbMHRA\">\n<div id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_2__container__\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_2\" title=\"3rd party ad content\" name=\"google_ads_iframe_7103\/usatoday\/native-article_link\/opinion_2\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-google-container-id=\"4\" data-load-complete=\"true\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Though the law required the feds to collect state fatality data by 2016, an <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/oig.justice.gov\/reports\/2018\/e1901.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">inspector general report revealed<\/a>\u00a0that the agency did not even intend to attempt to garner such data until this year. As of last year, the Justice Department had not yet bothered to \u201cimplement a system for collecting data or release any new details of how and why people die under the watch of law enforcement,\u201d<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/us\/articles\/2019-06-18\/government-fails-to-release-data-on-deaths-in-police-custody\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\"> The Associated Press reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">The Justice Department is not the only grossly negligent federal agency on this front. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s\u00a0National Vital Statistics System tracks the <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/nchs\/nvss\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">causes of all deaths<\/a> in the United States. That database, which is based on state death certificates, is\u00a0widely regarded as highly accurate but the &#8220;law-enforcement related mortality&#8221;\u00a0category has gaping holes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">A 2017 Harvard University study found that more than half of\u00a0police killings in 2015 were \u201c<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/news\/press-releases\/documenting-police-killings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">wrongly classified<\/a> as not having been the result of interactions with officers.\u201d Many were instead categorized as \u201c<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosmedicine\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pmed.1002399\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">accidental injury\u201d or \u201cundetermined<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">More than 30 people were killed by police in Oklahoma in 2015, but <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2017\/oct\/11\/police-killings-counted-harvard-study#maincontent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">\u201cnone of them were counted on death certificates,\u201d<\/a> Harvard\u2019s Justin Feldman observed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Death certificates were especially likely to wrongfully omit the <a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hsph.harvard.edu\/news\/press-releases\/documenting-police-killings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">police role for deaths of<\/a> \u201cpeople under age 18, blacks, people killed by something other than a firearm (particularly Tasers, which accounted for 46 deaths), and people killed in low-income counties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\">Federal criminal neglect of police killings has continued for more than 25\u00a0years under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Perhaps the latest wave of outrage will finally produce substantive reforms.\u00a0Bu<strong>t fervent proclamations by former presidents are no substitute for accurate body counts from official killings.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"gnt_ar_b_p\"><em>James Bovard, author of &#8220;<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Attention-Deficit-Democracy-James-Bovard-ebook\/dp\/B00TDQ1SJO\/ref=sr_1_2?ots=1&amp;slotNum=0&amp;imprToken=44b94cab-36d7-b0a9-f60&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1509052899&amp;sr=8-2&amp;keywords=attention+deficit+democracy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">Attention Deficit Democracy<\/a>,&#8221; is a member of USA TODAY\u2019s Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter:\u00a0<a class=\"gnt_ar_b_a\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JimBovard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-t-l=\"|inline|intext|n\/a\">@JimBovard<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>USA TODAY, June 11, 2020 Under four presidents, the Feds neglected duty to collect statistics on police killings Why has the Justice Department failed to follow a law from 1994? by James Bovard The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has been condemned by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush\u00a0and Barack Obama. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2389,887,426,1476,2287,432,137,2390,890,57,433],"class_list":["post-14825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1994-crime-bill","tag-barack-obama","tag-bill-clinton","tag-carnage","tag-centers-for-disease-control","tag-eric-holder","tag-george-w-bush","tag-james-fyfe","tag-loretta-lynch","tag-police","tag-shooting"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>USA TODAY: Presidents Perennially Ignored Federal Law on Police Carnage - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/11\/usa-today-presidents-perennially-ignored-federal-law-on-police-carnage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"USA TODAY: Presidents Perennially Ignored Federal Law on Police Carnage - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"USA TODAY, June 11, 2020 Under four presidents, the Feds neglected duty to collect statistics on police killings Why has the Justice Department failed to follow a law from 1994? by James Bovard The brutal killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police has been condemned by former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush\u00a0and Barack Obama. 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